1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to systems and methods for web analytics. More particularly, the present invention relates to an application service provider system and methods for providing a segmentation workbench for manipulation and display of web traffic data on a real-time basis.
2. Description of the Related Art
Web analytics refers to the analysis of data created by website usage. For instance, web analytics can be used to mine visitor traffic data. A variety of visitor traffic data is measured such as what browser is being used, what links on a given web page were selected, whether a product was purchase, etc. There are number of web analytics tools presently available such as Site Catalyst version 11 from Omniture of Orem, Utah. These tools are able to capture data on website usage, and responsive to a user's request display a variety of different metrics on website usage such fallout/conversion, A/B testing, etc.
One prior art method for presenting web analytics data to the user is on-line reporting. While on-line reporting can provide data at relatively high speeds and has some presentation flexibility using an HTML format, it significantly limits the data that is available to the user. Typically, the data is provided by extracting data from a database using in a set number of pre-defined reports. The user's ability to segregate the data, produce different reports, and look at the data with different combinations of metrics is severely limited. Thus while the user is able to view data on web traffic, it is often not the data that is most valuable to the user. Therefore, the problem with such on-line systems is that the user does not have the flexibility to get the data they desire and based on different slices of a metric.
Another method for presenting web traffic data to the user is by providing access to the data warehouse or database. Such an approach gives the user the ability to slice and manipulate the data as they desire to provide the reports that are most valuable to them. Such direct access also provides them with the flexibility to answer any question about the data presented, such system are typically very complex and difficult to use. In many cases, despite the availability of general database tools and user interfaces, a non-technical user cannot interact, query and generated the reports needed. Typically, business users work with a database programmer to extract and format the data as needed from the data warehouses. Moreover, such systems can be slow when there are many users trying to access the same date warehouse.
Thus, there is a need for an application service provider model for providing a segmentation workbench for manipulation and display of web traffic data that solves the above shortcomings of the prior art such as real-time delivery of data.